Almost
by Alicamel
Summary: Spoilers for Season 5 - Buffy and Dawn cope in different ways. Written before The Body, but simillar events have occured. (boy, this not spoiling in summaries is hard)
1. Almost

Almost, PG-13,   
  
by Alice R. aka Alicamel  
  
I'm sitting in the corner, my legs crushed against my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible. The old games I used to play. First with Buffy, though we never succeeded then, giggling and nudging each other, and then by myself, when she took on that holier- than-thou attitude that she learnt in Junior High.  
  
If I don't move, and don't breathe, they won't see me. They won't make me leave.   
  
Buffy's crying. For a Slayer she sure is weepy. Riley's just holding her, and everyone else is looking really uncomfortable. If I were a Slayer I wouldn't cry and weep and wait around. I'd do something, stop her getting sick. I'm not crying now, and I'm not even a Slayer.  
  
I wonder what they think about me not crying. Maybe they call me cold or harsh or unfeeling. I don't care. I don't feel like crying. I feel hollow. Like some demons cut out all my insides. I feel slightly sick too, but I don't want to move to the bathroom, because then they'd see me and make me go to bed.  
  
I don't want to go to sleep. I'm afraid I won't wake up.  
  
"Dawn? Dawny? There you are. You should probably go to bed." He lifts me up, like I'm a baby. I want to tell him I'm not, that I've grown up a lot since we moved from LA. I want to tell him he should have stayed around, so he could see me growing up, and getting bigger.   
  
He shouldn't be here. He doesn't care about mom anymore. Maybe he never did.   
  
Relationships are a big joke.   
  
I see them leaving from my bedroom window. All paired off, Xander and Anya, Giles and that Olivia girl, even Tara and Willow. Yeah I know about them. They pretend I don't or I shouldn't or something, but I'm not stupid. Not stupid enough to get into a relationship that's only about sex anyway.  
  
I'm going to be a nun, I swear.  
  
So off they go, little cosy twosomes, off to have sex to reaffirm their lives. That's what people do when someone dies. They have sex. To let themselves know they are alive. Like they couldn't just check their pulses or something.  
  
Riley and Buffy will too. In this house, in her room, on her bed. But trying to keep quiet, 'cause they think I'm awake, or they think I'm asleep. I don't know which.  
  
I think about walking in on them, interrupting them. Right in the middle. If I can't have relief that way, then I don't want Buffy too. It's not fair.  
  
But then she can cry and I can't. It's fitting in away.   
  
Buffy can do everything I can't. She can stay out as late as she wants, cause she's off saving someone's butt. She can do all these cool stunts, and I can't even do a proper somersault. She can fight, but I get in one tiny little scrap at school, and suddenly it's the end of the world. Oh yeah, and she can stop the apocalypse. And I can't. Did I mention that?  
  
I can't do anything. I'm just a big mistake. The Slayer doesn't need a kid sis to worry about. I mean, at least Willow and Xander and Riley can take care of themselves. Even mom hit Spike over the head once. What did I do? Invited a bunch of vampires into our house so they could attack everyone. And when Angelus captured me a couple of years back? I freaked. Couldn't even stay calm in a crisis.  
  
Mom didn't even want me. This girl at school told me her parents told her, I was just some ploy to try to keep their marriage together. I couldn't even do that. Those weirdoes were right I don't belong here.  
  
I hate my life.  
  
I don't sneak in on Buffy and Riley, I sneak out the other way. Through the bathroom and into mom's room. It's so clean and tidy, she liked it that way. The beds unmade though, from where Buffy and Willow pulled the covers off her to try and resuscitated her. And the paramedics must have knocked the picture frame off the table when the carried her out, cause there's glass all over the floor.  
  
I don't touch the bed. I don't wanna touch where she last lay. I should have tried to wake her that morning, but Buffy said she needed to rest. The coffee I made that morning's still on the bedside locker.  
  
I grab yesterdays' paper, and start picking up the glass from the frame, putting it in the centre of the paper. I cut myself on a sharp piece and it stings as the blood wells up. I suck on it, to stop it bleeding and my mouth fills with a tangy, metallic taste. I wonder what my blood would taste like to a vampire. If different blood groups taste differently, like sweet and sour and bitter all taste different.  
  
I go back to the bathroom and wet some toilet roll. That's what mom said to do. To make sure you get all the little pieces up, so you don't cut your foot on them in a few months. I do my best, but it's carpet. I need the hover, and I don't want to wake everyone up, clearing up the mess.  
  
Instead I pick up the picture, and stare at it. Some of the glass is still jagged in the frame. It's a black and white photo of mom, Buffy, and me right after we moved here, when I had my hair in that stupid short style. Buffy's hair looks silver in it; she glows. I'm just sitting there, looking awkward. Like I don't belong.  
  
I take it back to my room. It's not stealing, really. It's only moved a few rooms. And Buffy and me have both got copies of it in our albums.   
  
I crawl into bed with the picture, and my finger wanders around edge, cutting it again. There's something satisfying to it. I don't know what. Something only disturbed kids do, or crazies. Something you don't talk about. Something forbidden or secret or taboo. Something . . . It's almost enough to stop me.   
  
Almost.  
  
  



	2. It's Not Like That

  
Buffy was my hero. Even when we were kids, she was my hero. Like, Superman and Wonder-Woman and Batman all rolled into one. And far more cool than any of them. She didn't wear tights.  
  
I hate her.  
  
She makes me feel so small. I barely even get thirty seconds by myself, since, well   
  
I guess she's trying to do what mom did, but mom was never like this. Overwhelming. Like I'm too stupid to watch out for myself. I'm almost fifteen; I'm practically an adult. And all the teachers say I'm mature for my age. Mom understood that. Buffy doesn't even let me cross the road by myself.  
  
Well, it's not like that.  
  
She does let me cross the road by myself just.  
  
But I mean, I guess I don't hate her. Well, I do. But I love her too. And I hate her, and it's all at the same time, and it hurts. Loving hurts. Hating hurts. Living hurts, 'cause you're always loving someone or hating someone.   
  
Hating someone hurts because you know you shouldn't hate them. And loving someone hurts because in the end, you know that they're going to leave.  
  
Things have changed round here recently. Maybe because of mom, maybe because of something else. I never knew before what was going on, why should that change? I mean, Buffy the Almighty only gave this great big speech about how things were going to be equal between us, that she was only my guardian on paper, that we were going to be friends more than sisters and share everything equally.   
  
Well, we're sharing the chores equally.  
  
She doesn't speak to me like she speaks to Willow, or Xander, or Tara, or even Anya who she doesn't really like. She doesn't speak to me like she speaks to Giles. She doesn't speak to me like she speaks to Riley. She doesn't even speak to me the way she used to.   
  
So I sit in the bathroom, my legs crossed and my back against the cool white tiles, when they come home. Buffy shouts up, to check I am home she couldn't pick me up today, so Nicky's mom dropped me off. I call back, and they all go through to the living room beneath the bathroom.   
  
I languorously stretch out across the floor, and place my ear to it. I hear muffled voices, but nothing comes through clearly. Placing down the cool steel blade that I have been playing with, I pull myself up to face the mirror.  
  
I brush my mousy blond hair away, and splash my face with cold water. I look up, and see her looking back at me. Dawn, Dawnie, Kid, Sis, pain, Sister to the Slayer and daughter of no one. No one alive, and no one who matters. I don't even know who I am anymore.   
  
In my room I can't even hear the muffled noises anymore. I am isolated, and wrapped in silence. Well, near enough. Kids play beneath my window and birds sing and fly in great rushes of air. I watch the children running up and down, throwing a ball.   
  
How innocent and naïve. When Buffy was about my age she learnt that vampires and demons existed. I was about the age of those children, about ten, maybe a little older, maybe a little younger. Buffy and then Giles and mom, when she eventually found out, lectured me continuously about how anyone could be a vampire, that they looked human until it was too late.   
  
I guess it stuck with me. I never made friends easily, and what ten year old can when every face they see could be a mask to hide someone's true nature?  
  
It took me a while to realise that every face you see is a mask, whether they are a demon or not. A while, but not that long.   
  
Buffy used to be my hero, but now I've realised that she's not infallible. She occasionally stumbles and falters, she can pause at the wrong place and attack at the wrong time. She has to train, has to work, has to study. And sometimes she hates it. And she knows she could die at any minute, and has regrets. And she can't protect everyone and she can't stop every disaster. She couldn't save my mom. And she can't save me. 


End file.
